Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Whiskey Wednesday: The Malt Whisky Yearbook

Are you a whiskey geek? I mean, are you a real whiskey geek? Do you care whether whiskey is spelled with an e or not? Do you have firm opinions about things like chill filtering, the impact of terroir and Indian whiskey exports? Do you have The Scotch Blog bookmarked?

If you answered these questions affirmatively, you owe yourself a copy of the Malt Whisky Yearbook, an annual publication now in its third year.

The Yearbook is every whisk(e)y geek's dream come true. It includes profiles of all the working Scotch and Irish distilleries as well as profiles of independent bottlers, the major blends and closed distilleries, articles about the year in whiskey and best of all, charts and graphs tracking whiskey sales and forecasts. While it is a pretty Scotch-centric publication, there is a nod to Japanese, American and other malt whiskies as well as a list of whiskey publications and blogs (though they have woefully neglected mention of this fine website).

If you've ever lain awake wondering what the capacity is of the Glendullan distillery or what Italy's whiskey consumption was in 2006, you need this book. And if you read an obscure whiskey fact in this blog, chances are it came from the Malt Whisky Yearbook.